Margin Call

J.C. Chandor wrote the 82 page script in a week, killing time in Colorado between rounds of a job interview about selling wind farm land rights. He did the last pass in a borrowed Washington Square Films office and slept on its couch. Photographs of the actors were pinned to the wall behind him: the conference room scenes hold six or seven people and tracking who looks at whom gets hard. The shoot ran 17 days; Jeremy Irons was on set for two of them. On the day he was to fly from London his US work visa turned out to have expired, and a replacement stood by. Ben Kingsley had been attached to Tuld. Tim Robbins read it, said it lacked a satisfying final scene, and passed even after Chandor wrote one. The awards went to the writing and the debut: an original screenplay nomination at the 84th Academy Awards, Best First Feature and the Robert Altman Award at the 27th Independent Spirit Awards, Best First Film from the New York Film Critics Circle. A good fit if what each floor knows matters more than the charts as bad news travels up. Not for anyone wanting the ending on the market: the last scene has Sam Rogers burying his dog in his ex-wife’s front yard at night.